Apiary

I tend to like Stonemaier games, they published Wingspan, one of my all time favorite games, and even some of their less liked games, such as Pendulum, for the novelty in the design. Apiary features the same designer from Wyrmspan, however this one is wholy their design and I recall hearing pretty positive reviews. It just took me a while to finally get around to playing it.

In Apiary, bees have surpased the long extinct humans and have become a space faring species. Your workers are bees with variable strength and as they get bumped from spaces or when you retrieve them they'll increase in strength or must hibernate once they're at the end of their life. After a certain number of bees have been sent to hibernation, the game will end and you'll tally up points after one final turn.

This bumping workers adds an interesting layer of decision space to worker placement. Instead of the normal "blocking" mechanic we see with worker placement you have to judge whether or not you want to bump a worker for a specific action since spots are very limited. If its your own worker, then it feels more like a bonus, since you're making it more powerful - unless they were strength 4, then you're getting a hibernation bonus but losing a worker. On the other hand, if its another player's worker, then you're getting them another turn before they have to return their worker.

Just how much do you want to take that action? It's a fun dilemma to chose how to sequence your moves as best for you without giving too much for others. And those strength 4 bees are really good, often getting bonuses for certain actions.

There's a lot of variability in the general setup, leading to a easy replaybility and each game feeling fresh:

• The carve tiles are randomized from a batch and won't refresh.
• There's so many building tiles, with the recruit and development ones having really unique powers.
• Multi-use seed cards provide one-off abilities or end game scoring goals if you can plant them onto your ship.
• The planets you discover in space are randomized as well, some of them having pretty strong abilities.
• The factions have unique abilities, you'll only be playing as one for the game.

The solo mode is really easy to operate, a strong suit of Automa Factory that we've come to know and expect. Plus it has a couple different difficulty levels which you can adjust based on how skilled you are with the game.

Overall its a pretty smart and well done game. Turns are easy and you're free to accomplish your goals how you see fit. It's satisfying to build out your hive and get bonuses. There's a puzzle of resource management with limited storage space. To me, it doesn't feel like a brain burner for figuring out what to do. Lastly, the expansion was very seamless to integrate into the game, basically can just play as if it was always there.